A Tear of Petrol is in Your Eye
by Esther Honoria
Summary: Series of vignettes. Mention of abortion. Title: Grace Jones.


A/N: All previously published separately. The stories up until _Sets_ are the last stories I will probably ever publish for Twin Peaks. They were written during my last viewing before TPTR. Before the world began to envision Bowie's Agent Jeffries as a tea kettle. _After A Tear of Petrol_ , is a series of drabbles I can't bring myself to delete, no matter how bad they are. They were written back in 2013-14, and previously published as _To Die Slowly of a Sadness I Could Not Name._ If you find you dislike wherever you happen to land, please skip ahead. Most of these are disliked even by their author.

~•~  
Ornamental Gold  
~•~

Evelyn moved in front of a window; long shafts of light from the sun covered her face and upper body. Stepping into the shadows and sitting in the car, James watched as her eyes searched over him, passed across his arms and chest, settling finally on his eyes.

He could almost see Laura where Evelyn was now. He did see her and in his head he could hear her voice laughing, making fun of him for running away. He could also hear her urging him to go back to Donna.

Laura never wanted Donna to experience pain.

Leaving Donna was different, she wasn't like Laura or Maddy. They felt, they saw, they knew so much that other people couldn't. He had been able to feel from them when he stood near, something leeching out from their bodies to touch him, like a cloud, like mists. The handles of their souls, all dark. All hard, hot, heavy, a hand to his throat. But he welcomed their hands, their hearts, their souls. He sometimes thought he felt a part of the same in Donna, but in her it was forced, a creation of the other girl's memories. The persona of Laura that she acted out. And he'd left her, left her to the lake.

He'd loved her.

He comprehends that Evelyn is from a world other than the one he's known, the one he shared with Laura, with Maddy. From the women he couldn't help. He didn't help.

This woman's not the same; she is of another temperature. He would wind around his fingers, his wrist, her problems as colored twine. He would wrap them only to break the cords once tight. She would be free then to find the light beyond the pages she lives in now. He would set the path. He would be a stone. She would step on him, and he would allow her to break him. To settle him in, to allow him some of the death that had rooted within the women he'd known.

He'd run from Donna and her tears. He'd done what he never would with Laura. And now he was with another woman whose sorrow, whose aura fell from her like water, pooling about her in soft folds, kept contained by her heart. Her lungs, the palms of her hands.

But this woman's aura was not the same. The pain was not the same.

There was a coldness, smugness. Far off in her eyes he wondered what she was like in her youth. What was her life before this? What hardships had she and her brother endured?

Closing his eyes, the light behind Evelyn lingered, like dust motes floating over his vision, blinding him of the future and past.

~•~  
Coalesce  
~•~

In the near dark, the living room was heavily shadowed. Josie's face, with its light scented powder, shone out against the depths, her black suit, like the visage of someone who had once been. Not someone real, alive, sitting by the window now. Her eyes were distant and forlorn, her red lips an even line.

Laura watched as Josie revolved a pencil in her hand. She could hear the soft taps of its pointed end hitting against the fabric over her knee.

There was a clock somewhere in the adjoining room, she could hear it and the floorboards overhead every now and then as the Martells' readied themselves for bed.

Josie's gaze kept wandering to the window, as if anticipating something or someone outside. Translucent lenses of tears coated her eyes.

"We've been at this almost an hour. Josie, I think we should cut it short tonight. I need to get home."

"Home..." Josie turned from the window and leaned forward, her full attention on Laura. She looked at her for a few seconds before moving closer to where the girl was reclined on the sofa. "You have a date with that boy, Bobby Briggs, tonight. I remember."

Laura smiled but didn't mean it.

"'You going somewhere special?"

"No. Not really. Just around." Her smile was still there as she pulled at her sweater.

Josie raised from her chair. With a very light grip, she took hold of both of Laura's hands. Her touch, the degree of pressure, gave Laura the indication she was to stand and so she did. She stood to look directly in Josie's eyes as they searched her face. The browns of her irises made Laura think of amber. The image came to her and was gone.

The woman edged nearer, her head next to Laura's as she brought her body closer, their shoulders almost touching. Josie's perfume flooded her senses, a smokey floral over recently washed skin.

Laura's eyes closed as she accepted the kiss that was given to her with all the weight of passing doubt. Contact was brief, but only because of her haste to move to another point, a galaxy of options. She kissed as she'd been kissed before by another, her sheriff, whispering, "I wish you didn't have to leave."

Laura, she believed, knew her better than anyone. There was a darkness connecting them. As Josie saw it, an unspoken understanding that was from her side mixed with further emotions. She could feel the web of that connection whenever Laura came near. It mixed with her beauty in the dark.

Laura stood, her knees growing weaker, wanting to sink back to the sofa.

She felt tired, needing of something.

She needed something but not this. This felt like charity. This was something to pass the time, to silence the woman's begging.

What Laura needed was so rarely attained. Few could give what even she couldn't name.

~•~  
Artificial Light  
~•~

The salesman felt all the weight of the suitcase in his grip as he proceeded along the path that had become familiar to him. His thoughts as he neared the house were the same as his nature, of the caliginous and the mundane. Setting the suitcase on the ground to his side, Phillip Gerard leaned forward and knocked upon glass.

He waited in silence, his head bowed, listening for the sounds of a man inside he had no doubt moved through soft shafts of artificial light. Face reddening in frustration, Gerard backed away, hoping the door would swing open in his absence, as if the man would somehow sense his presence. When enough time had lapsed for him to realize no sale of any kind would be made that day, he took hold of his suitcase and slowly made his way back down the path to his vehicle.

His progression was monitored from inside the house.

O

The salesman returned less than a week later, arriving with the same amount of determination as before. He knocked firmly, rapidly, yet to no avail. Taking a business card from his pocket, he slipped it under the door, tutting in exasperation as he departed.

O

The summer sun was blinding, the humid air heavily and difficult to inhale as Phillip Gerard emerged from his camper a few days later.

Setting his suitcase down, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed away at the beads of perspiration on his brow. He stood still for a moment, lamenting to himself under his breath.

Once he made it to the apartment, he knocked and was pleased to finally see the door open, even if only a little. A young man peered through the line he'd created to the world outside.

With contact, the visitor took the opportunity to speak. "Hello, sir. The name's Gerard. I'm a shoe salesman... If you could spare the time, I-I have some samples you might be interested in seeing."

"No. No thank you."

"Well, everybody needs shoes, don't they?"

"I don't need any at the moment."

Gerard's features did not hide his remorse as well as he hoped. He stood absorbing the horticulturist's decision, and in the passing silence he began to sway on his feet, as though faint. He allowed his voice to accompany the weakness of his body. "Oh, oh... I feel as though I'm on fire in this heat. Please, sir, could I have a glass of water?" The words came from him slowly, as though their emergence required great strength. His eyes nearly rolled to the back of his head momentarily, enraptured.

The man, Harold Smith, responded with some hesitance, nodding and stepping back into his living room where he had left a pitcher of water on a side table. As he reached for the pitcher, he was shocked to find the salesman had made to follow him. Before Harold could act, the man had collapsed into a chair by the greenhouse. His suitcase was like a shadow by his side.

Gerard reached into his pocket again for his handkerchief and continued to wipe at his brow, panting. The temperature of the apartment wasn't much different from the air outside, other than the oscillating shifts of warm air circulated by antique fans.

Harold, at a loss, poured the water into a glass and handed it to Gerard. Thanking him, the salesman drank, gasping for air after he swallowed. He collected his breath, and in closing his eyes, seemingly fell into a trance of weakness and heat. In seconds he awoke and completely drained the glass of water, clumsily setting it aside. "Thank you, sir. I feel much better now."

Gerard was still, breathing unevenly as he looked over the room. His mind seemed to be on another matter before his gaze slowly returned to Smith, who had been watching intently. "Are you sure I can't interest you in some footwear? I-I can always come back. I don't mind."

There was something about the salesman that made Smith feel ill at ease, beside the fact that his persistence was unusual. He wished for Gerard to leave and never return. Unfortunately, he knew of no way to secure such an outcome other than by the purchase of his wares. With hesitation, he made vocal his wish to peruse the sample case.

"I'm glad you reconsidered. We have plenty of options to choose from, all with a guaranteed two day delivery. Ah... now here's just the right one..."

~•~  
A Tear of Petrol Is In Your Eye  
~•~

Phillip Jeffries cautiously studies the exotic birds of a zoo, those held captive within a tall conical wire cage. The varicolored birds remain on stands, immobilized. Unmoving, uncaring. His head is filled with their low cries and the rhythmic outbursts of children crossing cement paths to and from buildings and other cages containing life.

His eyes and the skin around them feel weak and sore, as though not long before he'd been crying to the point of exhaustion, something inside him broken, left hanging. Wariness of mind and body accompany, but he has no memory of the emotion behind his current state. The tears, however, are real as he wipes them from his face.

Outside the cage, watching the birds, he begins to feel a thread of what he must have known before, what was required to make his memories disappear.

o

A drink is in his hand as he hears a resonating sound, loud and echoing, like that of canon fire; the low reverberating explosives of fireworks. He moves closer to the wall, craning his head and neck, straining to identify what is occurring in the world, in the night, on the other side of the trailer.

As he's about to place the sound, a door flies open with the wind and instantaneously the noise ceases. He stands in the silence, moving his martini glass from one hand to another. The only noise he can detect now are the bubbles rising from the soft pink of his cherry 7-Up.

The settings of the room are of movies, and he is a thing of movies. By the window and wall through which he heard the sound is a wall of mirrors, thin shelves that as lattice work cover reflective surface. He can see an outline of himself beyond the shelves, his hair, his drink, and he creeps over to a standing lamp with its lone bulb pointed to the ceiling. His features lit from below.

o

There is a faint light from an area in the distance, the orange glow of fire, separating the shadows of the room.

He's sitting in a chair beside two that are vacant in the darkness. In a wave of warmth different from what he already knows, he can feel the presence of the previous occupants.

From his place in the night, he doesn't know what he hears, something slow, steady. A current of unintelligible light and energy. He looks to the curtains, to the lack of light behind them and their rooms, their halls.

He goes over the area again, disoriented. His eyes searching black corners and their velvet curtains. Where there was nothing there is now a face peering through, one that as an orb appears half pressed to shadow. A dull light takes the form of a circle over its features.

Philip finds he is calm when he shouldn't be. The will to move robbed from him. Looking at the face, the eyes stare ahead.

o

In a cafe, he sits with his elbows resting against the table. The place is filled with sunlight. It covers him and the room of otherwise empty tables.

All he can think of are the blurred memories of his dreams, the darkness with its lines of light. The heavy sound of drums.

o

The lights of the city pass in blurs. A sea of people move around him, paths and bodies merging together in tides, fading from his view as they progress to skyscrapers of glass in variations of blue and silver. Beige and bronze. Endless lines as he looks to passing heels, the backs of coats as they shift with swaying frames. Smoke passes from their lips and to the air, but from where he stands it escapes their crowns, their faces unseen.

He finds his lower teeth give when he pushes at their backs with his tongue, moving slightly with a faint creak.

Focusing on the limbs above and on cement, Phillip's heart stops as his line of sight moves to a pool of collected water made black in the night sky. Moving closer, he sees the reflection of a thousand bulbs of incandescence, the glowing backdrop of the New York City skyline. With each step the lights expand, the window allowing him access to a shadow world beneath watery depths. A world made red with a changing traffic light.

The color flows in streaks down the wet pavement, glistening as though with blood. A floodlight made neon. As he searches the faces across the street, he spots the waves of her red hair, the black velvet of her dress. She steps through the light, over it, and it's who she is. She stands of it. The wind draws from him his breath, his soul as a wisp of smoke. Her eyes move to him, her ruby lips forming a tight grin before she turns, fading with the others.

~•~  
Sets  
~•~

Lucy Moran moved her fingers from dishwater to the window's ledge. Light rings of soap dissolved around her nails and knuckles as she looked to the trees and over the lawn, to the chair her brother-in-law was sleeping in. The moon was with the sun.

Gwen came in the kitchen; Lucy's sister could feel her presence without having to turn. Lucy moved her hand from the wooden window frame to the crook of her arm, turning her fingers until the soap was made to fully disappear in the threads of her sweater. Little bursts she could hear as they erupted.

The oven door opened and closed as Gwen checked the casserole she was cooking. As she bent, one leg suspended in the air, she clicked her tongue then mumbled to herself. Taking a few steps closer to her sister, Gwen crossed her arms. "What are you still doin' in here? Larry and little Carl are asleep. Come in the living room."

"I don't feel like it."

"What?"

"I said, I don't feel like it!"

Gwen paused, pretending to inspect her hands. "Well, fine. So, what do you feel like doin'?"

"I don't know what I feel like!" Lucy confessed, gripping the sink as she continued searching the yard. She added in a calmer tone, almost to herself, "I feel like my life is falling apart."

Gwen leaned against the counter, knowing already what she would hear.

"When I told Andy I was pregnant and he reacted the way he did, I didn't think I'd ever want to talk to him again... let alone have his baby." She looked to the floor, her lower lip protruding as she absently ran her hands over her stomach. "That is, if it is his baby. But I miss him. I keep thinking about what my future could be like with him. What sort of father he'd be."

"Lucy, I know you're in a mess, but didn't you come here to try to get away from your problems?"

"Yeah, but-"

"But nothing. Dwelling on those two is gonna do nothing but give you a headache. Listen, you're going to be stuck with one of them for the rest of your life - don't give 'em any more time than they need before you're married. Learn from my mistakes." She gestured over her shoulder, toward the lawn chair in which Larry was sleeping.

Lucy's right hand moved over her upper arm, tightening her grip. No one understood how much pain she was in. No one cared. It was beyond her how she'd thought she would find solace with her family.

Visiting her sister had been an impulse. The thought of aborting the baby had been in her mind before Dick Tremayne had presented the idea, though she didn't want to admit it.

With both men making her feel disowned, unwanted. Making it seem as though her child - their child -would be better off having never existed, she'd left the town with hopes of having her life return to normal. Of preventing an unhappy life for another human. Her fear and lack of trust in herself acted as a guide.

She hadn't planned on being a mother, not so soon.

The clinic's number had been disguised at her desk as her sister and brother-in-law's. A visit with Gwen had been her excuse to the Sheriff, Agent Cooper, Hawk and Andy, and it was with that connection to her sister that she'd decided to visit when she'd changed her mind, driving late at night.

Now she would have give up, return to Twin Peaks.

"Me and little Carl will ride back with you tomorrow," Gwen said. "Would that make you feel better?"

Lucy didn't think it would, but she said nothing.

From the living room, the sounds of the TV spread throughout the house: Each day brings a new beginning, and every hour holds the promise of an invitation to love."

~•~  
Of Sadness  
~•~

"You spent a lot of time staring up into the arches of a bridge, making yourself dizzy. I remember."

"I wanted up there. I wanted in those rooms," Audrey reflected, searching the yellow counter of the diner beneath her hands. Dell Mibbler was two seats from her finishing his meal.

"Yeah, uh, I'd see you running though those weeds at least once a week. Running to look up at that old bridge. What... Eh, what did you see up there?"

"I saw a room. A room I wanted to be in, where the ceilings were arches no one could walk. I liked looking at that room for hours. I saw everything I wanted in there. Sometimes I didn't know if I could walk for staring, but I did. I passed the beauty salon and all its empty chairs and the Double R on the way home. Sometimes it was either so late or so early that the diner was closed. All I could do was stare in the windows. I pressed a camera to the glass and took a picture without lights. I still have that picture. But I never got that room. Never."

"A pretty girl like you shouldn't have been out doing those things."

"That room still exists, though," she continued, thinking. "It's waiting for me. And now I have someone to share it with."

"Who?" Shelly asked, re-filling Dell's coffee cup.

"Someone who doesn't even know about it or me, really." Audrey spun the stool under her to the left. Stop. Right. "But who understands."

"Don't you know you shouldn't be out doing those things?" Dell repeated.

"Now any bridge I see, wherever I go, I can look up and think of another time. Of that special room. It's all one big circle." Audrey stopped as the door opened and Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman stepped in. "Like this," she said, remembering where she'd left off, heart beating. She removed her ring, holding up the small circle to frame Cooper's face.

"Hello, Audrey," Agent Cooper nodded. He approached the counter, addressing Shelly, "Two cups of coffee, two of today's specials and some pie for dessert."

"Coming right up," Shelly smiled, her teeth showing between her closed lips.

"I'll go ahead and get us a booth," Sheriff Truman said, knowing Cooper would soon be otherwise engaged.

Cooper inexplicably felt inclined to extend his hand to Audrey, so he did.

She contentedly stared at his flesh. "I know there was a ring. I saw it," she said, examining where once a band had been on Dale's little finger. "Where'd it go?"

"A giant took it."

"What did it want with it?"

"I don't know. But I believe he'll get back to me about it."

Audrey kicked a foot outwards, swinging her leg twice. "It feels strange to not wear it, right? Do you find yourself pulling at the base of your finger willing it to appear? I know I would. Wait, here take mine." She promptly removed her silver ring, slipping it onto his little finger. "Just borrow it tonight, while you sleep. You can give it back to me tomorrow, OK?" She smiled and gently slid from the stool. Almost out the door, she looked over her shoulder. "Sweet dreams, Special Agent."

Stunned, Dale stood by the counter in the same spot where Audrey had left him until slowly he woke and took a seat opposite Harry.

The Sheriff watched, knowingly, as Cooper fidgeted with the jeweled ring on his finger throughout his meal, never taking it off.

~•~

Bobby sauntered in the kitchen, his shoes scuffling the floor. Tired after dealing with Ben Horne, he wasn't in the mood for the questions he knew his mother would ask over dinner.

Betty stood beside the stove, arms crossed, looking out a window. She was wearing a robe over her nightgown and her hair was tied back. Only the kitchen and living room of the house were lit.

"Bobby, your father's going to be home soon," she said without drawing her focus from the dew beaded blue lawns next door.

Bobby opened the refrigerator and removed a bottle of Coke, cracking the bottle open with a key chain. He gave his mother a look just over his nose before pressing the glass to his lips.

"I don't how but I can feel it. Right now, he's just... away," she said.

Bobby pushed the liquid into his cheek, half-listening. Closing the door to the refrigerator, the boy stared at his mother. Betty smiled sadly, not knowing what to say.

Bobby pulled at the end of his jacket as he walked from the kitchen to his room. Betty saw him in the dark hall a few seconds later, pulling a t-shirt over his head and discarding the gray suit she didn't remember buying him. She anticipated him sitting at the table and began to remove a Saran wrapped bowl from the ice-box. When she heard his boots stomping through the living room, she stopped and turned.

"Aren't you staying for dinner?"

"I got things to do." His tone was more jovial than it had been minutes before.

"At this time of night, Bobby?" She asked him casually, a hand at her throat.

"It's Saturday," he reminded her before taking another drink.

"Still. It's very late."

He looked at his mother. She had been crying. Her face was pale. He thought about the streets he wanted to roam. Golden-orange lamps and the shadows.

Why was he going out anyway? There wasn't anyone to meet. Snake was holed up with his new old squeeze. Don't think about it.

He didn't really hang out with too many others, not socially, and even if he did catch one of them, there wasn't anywhere to go. Not really.

So why did he still want to go out?

Laura.

He realized she was who he wanted to see. As if simply stepping out into the darkness was a way to find her again.

Bobby sighed and pulled a chair from the table, sitting down.

"There's some french vanilla ice cream in the fridge. For later," Betty said, pushing a bowl of green beans in front of him.

"One of Dad's favorites."

Betty grinned, despite her sadness, and ran her hand over her son's shoulder on the way to the counter.

~•~

Audrey emerged from shadowed corners to follow a man in a black suit. He, for some reason, uncharacteristically, appeared unaware of her presence as he stopped to look to the boughs of distant trees, to the beauty in their animation.

She walked a few steps behind, watching as different hairs on his head rustled faintly with the breeze. Her eyes moved to the pink skin of his neck, visible from under his collar. He had stopped, his head craned, listening to the music of the trees in the darkness. As she continued coming closer, Cooper grew slack, his back still facing her. "How did you know I was coming for you?" he asked calmly.

"A little bird told me."

He slowly accepted this information, turning around. "And did this bird have any distinctive markings?"

She drowsily blinked seeing him in full again. "Mmm, no I don't think so. It was red like a cardinal. I think. He only whistled, but I knew what his whistles meant. They spelled out your name, C-O-O-P-E-R. I added the Special Agent part."

Dale nodded, his chest raising as he inhaled.

"I just came back from seeing my brother Johnny. He was having some sort of bad dream. He didn't want to talk to me about it, though. He just kept asking for Laura... Agent Cooper, do you feel my hand on your heart?" Her empty hand reached outwards.

"No, Audrey, I do not."

"Now?"

"Yes. I see a heart."

"But is it yours? Reach inside and feel."

Dale placed his hand over his ribs. "It is mine. My heart."

"It was."

Cooper looked to her without a reaction other than mild confusion, easily read as blankness.

"You've given it to me. And I just might keep it, Special Agent. I just might."

He opened his mouth to speak, but Audrey stopped him, laughter and adoration in her eyes. "You're not going to find it out here. When we met, it jumped out of my mouth and into yours."

Dale's vision of trees faded to one of black, white and red. He realized they had all the time been in The Black Lodge.

"How did you get in this room, Audrey? Why are you here?"

"I'm not in this room. You called for me and I came to you."

"Then I'm still here. This is a dream."

"Yeah, but in dreams," she said, her eyes slyly roving to the side, "we can do whatever we want."

~•~

Sarah didn't bother putting on a robe as she hurried from her room to where her niece was sleeping down the hall. She'd been wakened by Maddy's screams and raced to find her. She envisioned her body on the floor, her face covered in blood. "No. No. No. Don't let anything else happen. Nothing else can happen. No..." she whispered to herself, trying to erase the images. Telling them to leave.

Sarah pushed open the door, flicking on the light. She found that Maddy was awake, the sheets on her bed were far from her body. Her mouth was open in shock as she looked up to Sarah, her hand trembling.

"Maddy! Maddy, what's happened?!"

"I-I'm sorry, Aunt Sarah," she gasped. "I didn't mean to wake you."

Sarah flew to her side, sitting on the edge of the bed, hugging Maddy tightly. "Was it a dream?"

"Yes. B-But it seemed so real, though. I saw you, Aunt Sarah. In a row of trees, you were smiling in the woods. I'd never seen you look so happy. It was like it was Christmas or something! You were talking to a person I couldn't see, and I wanted to join in. But as I came closer, I heard a twig snap behind me. When I turned, I saw a big, black dog. I knew I had to get away from him, so I ran and ran through the woods until I couldn't see him anywhere. I stopped and tried to think of where to go to be safe, but when I stopped I saw that the dog was right behind me. I got so scared I woke myself up." Maddy attempted to compose herself. Sarah brought her closer, rocking her as she had Laura when she used to wake from bad dreams.

"It bothers me that I couldn't see who you were talking to. Something told me it was Laura."

Sarah laughed in a gasp, her hand over her mouth. "Laura?"

"Yeah. I remember now. You said something... I-I don't know. But you were smiling."

"And Laura?"

"I felt her presence... I..." Maddy closed her eyes, drifting, trying to remember. After a moment of silence, her voice was impassioned with realization. "Maybe I was Laura. I think I was. And you were talking to me. To Maddy... It was like I'd dreamed this before, but it wasn't me who dreamed it. It was Laura. Maybe that sounds strange?"

"No," Sarah said, shaking her head.

"When Laura was alive, even though we were far apart. Sometimes," she hesitated,"I can't explain it... but I've always felt like I shared some of Laura's dreams."

"Your mother and I have had the same dream before." Sarah's eyelids fluttered as she tried to understand. "Did you see a horse? A white horse anywhere?"

"A white horse? No. No, I don't think so."

Sarah placed a hand to Maddy's forehead, trying to calm her, trying to somehow remove whatever darkness might have tried to take root within. "Don't think about it anymore. You don't need to think about it. I'll stay with you, in here, if you want."

"No. I'm fine, Aunt Sarah. Thanks."

"Are you sure? What about something to drink?"

"Really, I'm fine. Go back to sleep. I'm sorry I woke you up. I hope I didn't wake Uncle Leland as well..."

"He'll be understanding if you did." Sarah stood some distance from the bed, her arms crossed. "Don't worry. Now, good night, sweetie."

"Good night." Maddy watched as Sarah closed the door, removing the faint light of the hallway from her room. She pulled the blankets over her again. They were Laura's, and in them some of her cousin's dreams had been sealed.

~•~

In a dark, foreign room two girls were absorbed in shadow. From their bed a dull standing lamp cast light on their noses, their arms, but little else. They'd been left in pink embers as the paying man stepped out. Long forgotten, his reason for leaving.

"Ronette, are we lost?"

"Does it feel that way?"

"Yes."

"Then I guess we are."

Unhappy with the answer, Laura rolled to her side, obscuring her face from Ronette's view.

"But what can we do about it?" The brunette sighed, exhaling a cloud of smoke, not taking her friend's words seriously.

"I don't think there's any way out."

Dabbing out her cigarette, Ronette followed Laura's movements, draping an arm over her side, comfortingly.

"When there is a way in there's usually a way out."

"I know there is a way out. But I'm too afraid to take it now."

"Why leave? Stay lost with me."

Laura turned. "I want to..."

Ronette took Laura's hand.

"- but I can't stay this way, not forever."

"Maybe not. But for now you're safe with me."

~•~

In lines of red Lana smiled, not because the person she'd encountered in the hall happened to be a man, but because she now had one less in her life.

Lace living in satin flew with the wind, billowing behind as her web; misleadingly encasing her body instead of that of her prey. Painted in this white she screamed.

She wanted everyone to know what had happened, but then not realize at the same time, not will themselves to believe. "Oh, he's dead, he's dead!" She ran waving her hands to the sides. How like the birds, how like the fools. What fun.

A nice man had comforted her as she cried, speaking of broken jaws and curses.

Always touching. Always they found an excuse to place a hand on an arm, a knee. Closer to where they wanted to but couldn't.

Maybe she'd let him. He was a much improved change from the shriveled and deaf pears she was used to. She imagined his long hair loose and falling in his eyes. His uncovered skin.

He had a poet's soul.

With her body she could give him enough inspiration to write a book. Ha-ha.

It didn't matter if he was already taken, stealing was part of the fun. Most of the fun.

She loved the power.

Within the next couple of days, she would find herself in the Police Department and, mysteriously, she and this 'Hawk' would find themselves alone...

~•~

Audrey escaped a door hidden in plaster and poorly conceived flowers. Turning her back to the outside, the area she was allowed, she locked away her secret.

She noticed Bobby Briggs at the far end of the empty hall. He was nervously walking back and forth, wearing an ill-fitting gray suit. The male mind beneath greased hair was apparently fixated on finding large words that might impress his new 'boss'.

Sneaking, Audrey enjoyed seeing him jump as she asked, "Is this how it's going to be from now on, Bobby Briggs? I don't see you at school or around town but the halls of my father's hotel?"

Bobby nonchalantly shrugged.

Her brows raised as her hands slid together; keeping in step with the lanky boy. "So... what sort of errand are you running for my daddy today?"

"A secret sort." Bobby ran a finger over Audrey's lips, zipping them.

Her closed mouth curved upwards as her lids lowered.

"Bobby Briggs, you'd better watch out. You don't want to start something you don't know how to stop."

Bobby moved in closer. "Who says I'd wanna to stop?"

Audrey slowly started off down the hall.

"Audrey, c'mon. After I'm done talkin' business with Mr. Horne, maybe we could go into town or somethin'?"

Audrey thought about what the next hour could hold, first with Bobby then without. In one eye she saw movement in the streets, clashing colors, the trees. In the other she saw her room, dark and lonely and the never-ending empty halls outside it. She spun on a heel.

"You understand that if I go with you it won't be a date, right? And that we're just friends?"

"Sure. For now."

"There's not going to be any 'later' to it, Bobby Briggs."

~•~

Margaret remembered when once her arms were free. When her ankles and bare feet, sore from dancing, had been caked with thick sand, deep and cold.

She didn't know where she'd been or even the date. She could, however, remember the sky and the wind.

She'd turned, her skirt rippling in the breeze, molding to her legs, as she faced sparse trees waiting for her beau to emerge from behind mounds of tall sand bordering the clearing.

Growing tired, Margaret had walked, hoping as she moved he would pick up on her impatience and come forward.

He had gone for what he'd forgotten in the truck. She'd wished he hadn't, as an image of his boot kicking stones into a ditch had flashed before her eyes and with it she knew he was intentionally taking his time.

As Margaret's thoughts went to her bed, and how much she'd wished to be in it, he'd appeared over the dunes like an apparition, and soon a fire was built at her feet.

That was before she hated fire. That was before it had taken him.

~•~

Bobby drug his unlaced boots over the asphalt and stray stones of a parking lot.

It had been nearing 11 p.m. when he'd crawled from the basement, shutting quietly the kitchen door behind him. He knew from the silence and darkness of the house that his parents had long ago fallen asleep.

In the open, in the night, in his mind, he heard their prayers, the soft noises of their feet over carpet. Robert, put out that cigarette.

He had to get out.

His plan was to buy some food, maybe another pack of the cigarettes he wasn't supposed to have, and then sit outside in the glow of the Cash and Carry storefront; allowing puffs of smoke to leave his lips, to wilt and disappear into the cool air; to the moon.

The mechanics of the electric door groaned next to him as it opened for an elderly woman. Waiting, he saw behind the rundown brick building, a girl emerge from a line of night. Bobby stooped to gain a better view, seeing little more than the faintness of a swaying shape in the endless black. He didn't need to see her face to know the girl was Laura.

"Hey, Bobby. What cha doing?" She said, still an outline. In her eyes he was cast in the gold and whites of florescence.

"Goin' to go in here in a minute."

"Ah..."

In the light beside him, Laura widely opened her eyes, looking beyond transparent doors. A cashier stood lifeless at his register searching his wrist. The marketing ads hanging from the ceiling were swinging left to right in the breeze from dank air vents.

Both stared. Transfixed, depressed.

"OW! What're you doing," Bobby shouted, suddenly, ripping his hand from Laura's, who had sunk the tips of her nails into his palm.

"What's it look like I'm doing!?"

Laura hurriedly gripped his protected hand from the air, pushing his fingers together under hers, turning his palm to face him. The thin half-circle indentations of her nails were softly red. She pressed into the marks she'd made, reciting in a hazy whisper, "I see the moon and the moon sees me. God bless the moon. God bless Bobby and me."

She left him to stand on his own, and he stared at the ovals in his palm longer than he meant to. Turning to the now empty door he moved inside. She quickly followed.

"You're drivin' me nuts."

"It's not like you have very far to go."

"Yeh, yeh..." He grabbed a bag of chips from a shelf. "So were you off to get re-acquainted with some of your little round friends, or did you just come back from fun land?"

"I just came back," Laura answered quietly. "Where did you come from, Bobby?"

"The basement."

She pursed her lips as she studied a display of dish soap.

"I know something about love," Brenda Reid, of The Exciters, interposed from above, in Tell Him.

Bobby stared at Laura long and hard as the song continued, filling the aisles. Filling everything. Laura moved her finger over the display and shelves, as if checking for dust, only never letting her finger come in contact with what she saw.

"You need this junk like you need a hole in the head," she said, breaking the silence between them.

She wouldn't even look up until he crept nearer, turning her chin so she would face him, a gallery of frozen food behind her. She stared back, her face emotionless.

"If that guys got into your blood go out and get him," Brenda continued.

* * *

~oOo~


End file.
